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Originally Posted by dave_p
You completely miss the point, and you may want to at least skim over the rest of the thread. It's not that 1 AoE shot for 450 (or, you know, 710 w/Musculature) replaces a blaster. It's 8 of them on a team (more on a league). And it's by ppl who can better debuff crowds, or just ignore any return fire, than blasters. So tell me again why a team of 7 nuking defenders/controllers/scrappers/tanks will want a blaster.
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because no other AT can destroy a 8/3 mob in less then 10 seconds solo (including bosses).
I don't know any other class that can do that. Sometimes i wonder if people who play blasters just spend all their time slotting to cover it's weaknesses and not slotting to play to it's strengths. As far as i'm concerned a blaster should be able to do more non-stop DPS then the next 3 members of your team (single target or group) and the most burst damage of any AT (i call burst 10 seconds, in 10 seconds if you can't drop a full mob of +2 or +3 foes including bosses then you need to re-examin your slotting... 10 seconds because that's about how much time you have with your buildup and aim)
I don't solo much, might be why i'm building my blasters for 100% base damage buff, 160% base acc buff, and 90+% to hit buff. Throw on musculature, and all your attacks will be buffed well over 100%... maybe this is a weird way to build... but it seems to work just fine for me... even when i solo, nothing lasts long enough to threaten my blaster even with it's almost non-existent defenses.
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If you think about it, all the incarnate abilities should be flavored by the AT you are playing. A blaster's incarnate nuke should be exceptional in the extreme. A defenders incarnate debuffs should be extreme, A masterminds incarnate pets should be tougher and more controllable etc,etc. |
Originally Posted by dave_p
And once again, my very simple "fix" is to allow blasters' defiance to affect Judgement. Applying the full damage scalar might also be an answer though I fear that maybe a bit too unbalancing, favoring blasters & scrappers. |
The incarnate system shouldn't remove the flavor from your character.
Edit: Thinking about it
I would want my blaster to be the incarnate of BLAST !!
Not the incarnate of average
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I.E. All those silly people who make builds taking power picks as IO slot mules to try and softcap defense over doing damage.|
because no other AT can destroy a 8/3 mob in less then 10 seconds solo (including bosses). I don't know any other class that can do that. Sometimes i wonder if people who play blasters just spend all their time slotting to cover it's weaknesses and not slotting to play to it's strengths. |
As for the whole debuff argument, it doesn't wash. Because if I'm paired with a rad or a dark then guess what, I'm getting my force just as multiplied, and I've got a lot more attacks then one 90 second nuke. Last time I checked we tend to fight more then one spawn every 90 seconds too. That and good luck killing the AV with just your debuffs and a nuke without extra DPS from other AT's Along with the fact not every MM / def / corr / troller is gonna be a rad or a dark. Take a kin for instance, if judgment isn't affected by buffs then a fulcrum shift is doing the blaster a whole heckuva lot more good in that instance.
Way too much doom in this thread if you honestly think one hard to get incarnate ability is suddenly pushing blasters off to the wayside.
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As opposed to all of those silly people who think that damage and DEF are mutually exclusive? The poster to whom you're responding doesn't seem to have a solid grasp of the game's mechanics, frankly. He throws around meaningless numbers like +100% damage, +100 ToHit -- all without a shred of context. If he's talking about IO set bonuses, then what he describes cannot be done. If he's talking about enhancement, then fine, but every half-decent Blaster build slots ED-capped damage in its attacks. If he's talking about Build Up, then likewise: no one's skipping Build Up to soft-cap DEF.|
Originally Posted by Dragonkat
I.E. All those silly people who make builds taking power picks as IO slot mules to try and softcap defense over doing damage.
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He doesn't even mention the most significant offensive IO bonus -- global recharge -- despite that he seems to assume that Aim and Build Up will both be available for every spawn. He boasts that Blasters can kill x8/+3 boss spawns in ten seconds, but he doesn't specify whether he's using nukes. If he can consistently drop multiple bosses with an effective HP of ~4,136 in less than ten seconds without nukes, then I'd dearly love to see his build. That's 2,689 HP divided by 0.65, to account for the fact that your powers are only 65% effective against +3s.
(For reference, a level 50 Fire/MM Blaster with Aim, Build Up, ED-capped damage enhancement and enough recharge seamlessly to chain Fire Breath, Fire Ball, Psychic Scream and Psionic Shockwave will deliver 1166.11 AoE damage, on average, in the ~9 seconds of overlap you have on Aim+Build Up, assuming that you don't have to reposition to deliver the cones, and assuming that the cones don't have lesser target caps, both of which are totally abstract assumptions.
Adding an extra 100% damage on top of that would only raise the total damage dealt to 1488.6. That's a far cry from 4,136, ain't it? Even Inferno with all of those damage buffs would only get you about halfway to your target, leaving you with about 6 seconds to lop off the other 1900 or so HP, in an AoE no less.)
In the meanwhile, though, by all means: feel free to throw out baseless generalizations to bolster Sprite Fire's non-point.
Also, this: DEF-capped Blaster with 70% global recharge and the Spiritual Alpha versus High-offense Blaster with 110% global recharge and the Musculature Alpha
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| Because if I'm paired with a rad or a dark then guess what, I'm getting my force just as multiplied, |
That's the contribution of one Conroller with Freezing Rain versus your Blaster. On a team of the most anemic damage dealers you can imagine.
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| Last time I checked we tend to fight more then one spawn every 90 seconds too. That and good luck killing the AV with just your debuffs and a nuke without extra DPS from other AT's |
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| Along with the fact not every MM / def / corr / troller is gonna be a rad or a dark. |
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| Take a kin for instance, if judgment isn't affected by buffs then a fulcrum shift is doing the blaster a whole heckuva lot more good in that instance. |
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| Way too much doom in this thread if you honestly think one hard to get incarnate ability is suddenly pushing blasters off to the wayside. |
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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To be fair, these new powers are blurring lines between the ATs enough that it almost might not matter who you bring for a lot of things. I don't see judgement completely changing boss fights, but ambushes etc., are another thing.
I have seen posts from people that these powers are almost trivializing some things in the incarnate trials, so I do wonder where this is all going. Maybe some AT mods need to be applied to the incarnate powers (new ones, just for those), or the powers need to be toned down... or there are some scary things planned for future encounters to justify all our power.
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory
Plus most of this in the CURRENT content.
Lets take the Lambda trial for example:
You have multiple portals spawning mass mobs all while trying to nuke down a massive AV with a rage timer that can hit like a mack truck and turn your softcapped tanker into a squishy mess on the ground.
Your options are to grenade the portals, or use your judgement powers to thin the herd. While your thining the herd, a blaster comes along, and finished off whatever it is you just thinned out for him.
Also look at the BAF, you need to kill prisoners in order to succeed, and the judgement powers do that in AoE fashion, but with near endless prisoners, you need someone that can also take out prisoners while the judgement powers are on cooldown. Hello blaster.
Now, for an ITF, or LGTF, or heck, even a RSF, the judgement powers will just make them even more cake walk, and a blaster may feel like hes underperforming, but only just barely.
For those saying 'debuff is awesome' keep in mind you have to animate the debuffs, and for them to really be effective, you need either the anchor (rad) or position (traps, kin, cold, dark) to stay constant enough for the debuffs to actually matter. While a team of pure debuffs with full judgement powers will steam roll, a team of pure blasters with full judgement powers will do it faster, just due to the fact there is no time where are aren't dealing damage.
My fire/kin corr can kill pretty quickly, but i'm only doing damage about half the time i could be, due to my kin heals, SBing people, hitting fulcum, etc, where my fire/fire blaster does about the same damage, but everything he does deals damage, every button i press will instantly do some form of damage up front, with maybe an secondary effect. My earth/rad on the other hand doesnt deal much damage up front, but she does kill things, and she does it savely behind her pet, and all her debuffs. I kill slow and steady, but i have very little chance of dying when all my debuffs are out on the field, it just takes quite some time to lay down all those debuffs.
Thats why the judgement powers won't have too much of an effect on blasters damage output, or them being overshadowed by other ATs in the damage department.
And on fights were debuffs actually matter, AoEs usually don't, so judgement powers may not be used as often on fights where your debuffs make that much of a different.
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AT differences will absolutely matter less and less going forward, but again, if that means your AT-specific strength is taking a hit, who suffers the most? Most things being equal, I'm taking someone w/natively better defenses and/or buffs & debuffs. There's very little argument for taking someone who's base is just more damage, when there's so much yet more damage to come in the game. Unless of course, that upcoming damage is also increased by your native strengths (i.e. give blasters defiance for Judgement).
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Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim
To be fair, these new powers are blurring lines between the ATs enough that it almost might not matter who you bring for a lot of things. I don't see judgement completely changing boss fights, but ambushes etc., are another thing.
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An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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This is like saying I like X powerset, because it has some obviously skippable powers, which is about as backhanded a compliment as you can get. Assuming your Corr has a steady attack chain, you can absolutely choose to do nothing but insta-damage w/every button you press. You choose not to, because some of your buttons do other, *better* things.|
Originally Posted by Arbegla
My fire/kin corr can kill pretty quickly, but i'm only doing damage about half the time i could be, due to my kin heals, SBing people, hitting fulcum, etc, where my fire/fire blaster does about the same damage, but everything he does deals damage, every button i press will instantly do some form of damage up front, with maybe an secondary effect.
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If we gave every blaster SB, do you think we'd all mash our blasts every chance we got? Well, some would, obviously, but the great majority of us, who understand the concept of power multipliers, would choose to forego some immediate pow-pow gratification to buff our teammates so that they could pump out even more damage, and the team would benefit. Oh wait, corrs already play like that, even though they can absolutely just do damage. So how do blasters currently compete w/corrs? Well, they do more damage(*). But if you give both blasters & corrs equal amounts of yet more damage, you don't think the blaster suffers by comparison?
(*Blasters doing more damage than corrs is debatable and situational. I think we can agree that blasters have the best advantage doing front-loaded, burst damage, using Aim+BU chains to open fights (maybe after the tank has taken aggro... maybe not) w/o worrying about scourge. Hey, guess what Judgement blasts are really, really good at, and w/o relying on Aim+BU?)
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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I think the really pertinent question is whether the AT-specific strength we're discussing is all that important in the first place. The discussion has, in large part, been derailed by this side issue of whether or not Blasters will be passed over by, or whether Blasters are relevant in, teams.|
Originally Posted by dave_p
AT differences will absolutely matter less and less going forward, but again, if that means your AT-specific strength is taking a hit, who suffers the most? Most things being equal, I'm taking someone w/natively better defenses and/or buffs & debuffs. There's very little argument for taking someone who's base is just more damage, when there's so much yet more damage to come in the game. Unless of course, that upcoming damage is also increased by your native strengths (i.e. give blasters defiance for Judgement).
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Those are fine issues to discuss, but in my view they miss the forest for the trees.
The teaming issue is only important to the extent that it describes how good Blasters are at teaming. There is another, equally important side of that equation too: how good are Blasters at soloing? It is my contention that Blasters as a whole class are unusually ill-suited for both. A Scrapper arguably isn't all that team-friendly either, after all -- but a Scrapper given equal resources is a much better overall soloer to make up for that teaming deficiency.
What do Blasters get? Well they're not particularly good at single-target damage. In fact, their best single-target damage tends to be tied at least in part to melee attacks, which are generally not a good idea for Blasters to use in situations where single-target damage is most important (AV fights and the like). Even if we ignore that little wrinkle, all of the empirical evidence tends to suggest that Blasters are by no means possessed of a huge, practical damage advantage over every other AT. In many cases (like the aforementioned AV fight), straight damage tends to be marginalized by buff/debuff capability anyway.
So we're left with AoE damage. AoE damage is kind of the de-facto Blaster AT asset because it's the only area where Blasters are generally ahead of their closest, on-paper damage-dealing competitors, Scrappers. If nothing else, Blaster AoE attacks tend to have higher target caps than Scrapper PBAoE powers. If nothing else, Blasters tend to have better burst capability because they can stack (or alternate) Build Up and Aim.
That's all well and good, but seriously, when's the last time any level 50 team found that the ability to kill a full spawn of trash mobs a couple of seconds faster was the difference between success and failure? Arbegla brings up the BAF trial escapees, which may prove to be a good place for Blasters to shine, but that one, new gimmicky encounter aside, I've never seen a high-level team have any trouble handling large spawns quickly and with ease, and without the help of a Blaster. What I have seen, on occasion, are high-level teams that lacked the support (or control, or aggro management) to get past a given challenge. What I have seen (very rarely) are Blaster-heavy teams that spent so much time getting killed that their increased kill speed wasn't enough to net a gain.
And in those few situations where huge hordes of mobs are relevant (like the last fight in Barracuda, with all the ambush waves that accompany Reichsman), a Blaster is not the key to success. On the contrary, it is precisely because Blasters' damage is not the unquestioned superior to everyone else's that brute force tends not to work in those scenarios. A Blaster cannot, as a general rule, melt mobs several times faster than anyone else. A Blaster cannot melt mobs consistently at a pace that competes with a Control AT's ability to neutralize them.
In a solo environment, the Blasters' shortcomings are self-evident. Good players with good builds can make lemonade out of lemons, but there's only so much you can do to compensate for Blasters' general lack of utility, defense, and status protection. Straight damage will carry the day against spawns of lower-HP targets, but the Blaster has very little margin for error even in favorable circumstances, and even less flexibility to adjust in unfavorable circumstances.
The Judgement slot is basically an afterthought in this discussion. The only reason Judgement is relevant at all is that it highlights pre-existing Blaster deficiencies. Blasters' already had a tenuous enough hold on their presumed specialty -- damage, specifically AoE damage -- which itself was already a tenuous enough reason for being, lacking any particularly efficient means to leverage that damage without teammate support.
The Blaster is the most needy AT in the game, generally speaking. The new Incarnate stuff isn't all bad news: Interface and Lore and Destiny will help to shore up the AT's weaknesses. But because the Blaster needs those bonuses more than anyone else, the performance gap will remain. It's not a bad idea to play a Blaster if that's what you want to do. Most teams won't refuse to invite you on the basis of perceived AT deficiencies. In fact, if anything, the general populace has an inflated idea of Blaster offense (as we've seen with Sprite Fire).
Hey, look, another semi-redundant ramble from me. Sorry.
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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Yeah, no offense to Arbegla, whose posts I generally admire, but that entire passage read as a desperately rosey way of saying, "My Blaster is only capable of one thing; therefore my Blaster does more of it."|
Originally Posted by dave_p
This is like saying I like X powerset, because it has some obviously skippable powers, which is about as backhanded a compliment as you can get. Assuming your Corr has a steady attack chain, you can absolutely choose to do nothing but insta-damage w/every button you press. You choose not to, because some of your buttons do other, *better* things.
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There is a nugget of truth there, but I think Arbegla took it one step too far. A debuff build has to spend at least a couple of seconds prepping a spawn in order to reach the lofty heights of Blaster-competitive damage (and/or in order to proceed safely). It is largely for that reason that Blasters can solo faster than a lot of debuff builds, assuming the Blasters don't die more often.
By the same token, my Dominator, which is in basically every way superior to my comparably built Blaster (Mind/Fire versus Fire/Mental), takes an extra second or two to prep a spawn by tossing out magnitude 6 mezzes so her opponents don't move out of her AoEs or fire back.
I don't believe it's reasonable in either case to count that extra capability as a burden simply because it can eat up time. This isn't a witch hunt aimed at support ATs; it isn't even a fixation with support ATs. The point is that most ATs are especially good at either teaming or soloing, or they're decent at both. Support ATs are obviously very good at teaming, and Blasters pale by comparison. That's not a problem in and of itself; it's only a problem because Blasters aren't particularly good at soloing either.
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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Obitus, you touch on a lot of points that I was actively trying to avoid, not wanting to turn this into another "why blasters?" topic. Still, you echo a lot of my own sentiments.
I'd actually rather solo blasters than defenders--I really hate defenders' kill speeds. As you mention, you have to setup your debuffs (or mag 6 holds!) before your attack chain, and I can IO my blasters to the point where I can easily survive any return alpha, so basically use the "killing is the best form of mitigation" method of survival. They're not scrappers or controllers (nevermind the vil ATs) in terms of solo speed vs. survivability, but they beat defenders in raw, burst damage, and being survivable enough, they also outspeed tanks through most solo content. Of course, not everyone can def-cap their blasters, but as soloing occurs largely in a vacuum, I'm not really worried about how I20 hurts *my* blasters' soloability. TBH, solo Judgment's 90s recharge really does seem a bit long for, say, my defenders. As an aside, on my tanks (brutes/scrappers), I'd prolly use that 90s to drag my aggro limit to another spawn to hit w/a Judgment nuke.
On teams, if you're already getting good debuffing from your teammates as many are asserting in this thread, and assuming you're getting good aggro/crowd control, and your blaster is just allowed to let loose (these seem like rather unfair assumptions that other ATs rarely have to make, but it happens often enough so let's go with them), an AoE blaster's overall damage contributions should still top everyone else including serious outliers like SD/ELM, SS/SD, Fire/Fire scrappers, etc. Of course, those outliers don't exactly need an ideal team situation to always cut loose w/minimal fear of personal safety.
It's also been argued that just as Judgement steps on blasters' toes, other Incarnate slots steps on others' toes as much. IO'ed out melee are already survivable enough and added buffs (including pet buffs) may not really help them all that much, while they give blasters exactly what they need to solo better and contribute more to teams. Of course they also give similar, added benefits to already survivable (but not to melee extremes, though more than blasters in general) defenders and controllers (and corrs, doms, etc), so no net "gain" for the blasters in this line of reasoning either.
So what's the bottom line? There may or may not be a need to visit roles blasters play *right now* before we even get to address Incarnate effects on the AT. However, I see no hint that the devs are looking at this issue, but since I20 is in beta, those powers are "in play" if you will. If nothing changes... well, if you think blasters are already deficient on teams, I20 will make it worse. Even if you think blasters are okay now, it's my opinion that I20 will make you... less.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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You make a good point. Let me back up a second: when we discuss soloability as a distinct and separate category of performance, what are we really measuring? I guess we could be talking about speed, which was probably the most common metric before the new and improved difficulty slider was introduced. After all, when the highest difficulty was Invincible @ +3/x1 (or Unyielding at +2/x2, basically, depending on how you look at it), it was a pretty clear-cut matter that competent Blasters were better soloists than most support ATs. (Or at least, Blasters seemed to be much more pleasant to solo for most people.)|
Originally Posted by dave_p
I'd actually rather solo blasters than defenders--I really hate defenders' kill speeds. As you mention, you have to setup your debuffs (or mag 6 holds!) before your attack chain, and I can IO my blasters to the point where I can easily survive any return alpha, so basically use the "killing is the best form of mitigation" method of survival. They're not scrappers or controllers (nevermind the vil ATs) in terms of solo speed vs. survivability, but they beat defenders in raw, burst damage, and being survivable enough, they also outspeed tanks through most solo content. Of course, not everyone can def-cap their blasters, but as soloing occurs largely in a vacuum, I'm not really worried about how I20 hurts *my* blasters' soloability.
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But I'm not talking about speed. I'm talking about self-sufficiency. That is, how much stuff you can handle, and how nasty that stuff can get before you're in danger. How well you can adjust to different situations. How reliant you are (or aren't) on external influences.
In my mind, that's a useful standard of performance because it speaks both to solo capability and general team usefulness. When I talk about soloing in this thread, I am, if you like, trying to sidestep all of the questions about what the Blaster's teammates may or may not be doing for him. The quote of yours that follows sums that metric up nicely, just in a different way:
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| On teams, if you're already getting good debuffing from your teammates as many are asserting in this thread, and assuming you're getting good aggro/crowd control, and your blaster is just allowed to let loose (these seem like rather unfair assumptions that other ATs rarely have to make, but it happens often enough so let's go with them), an AoE blaster's overall damage contributions should still top everyone else |
Most high-level characters have at least one good AoE power. FWIW, in my experience, most people past Patron/Epic level have at least two good AoE powers. It doesn't take a particularly large team before the sum of those AoE powers begins to trivialize any numerical advantages that Blaster AoEs might enjoy.
So yeah, if the Blaster can cut loose, he should be comfortably atop the AoE damage list on a given team of non-Blasters. But even if the Blaster outstrips his nearest competitor by two or even three times, the total AoE kill speed of an eight-man team is not going to move a whole lot one way or the other due to the Blaster's presence or absence.
That's why I don't like crashing nukes; in theory they're a great supplement to a steamroll team's exp-over-time. In practice, the nuke only means that a given spawn will die while some of my teammates' attacks are still animating. For all of my trouble, I save a second or two of time for the team, and cost myself several seconds in retoggling time.
So long story short: the Blaster is a specialist that relies heavily on teammate support. The Blaster's contribution isn't particularly important to the team, though -- inadequate when compared with the support it requires.
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Originally Posted by Iggy_Kamakaze
Nice build
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Ummm hello? To much typing not enough damage people! You are blasters, not secrataries!
i think the aoe immobs that are afforded blasters in the epic/patron pools help a blaster leverage his damage a lot better. the list of things that all have to be going right is a bit less when hes able to stack slows and immobs.
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I can go with that thought.|
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison
If anyone has a right to complain here, it's Peacebringers. It started when blasters got control and shields in their Ancillary pools.
If everyone's a jack of all trades that doesn't pay for their versatility, what the hell is a Peacebringer? |
Another thought to go with, the debuff procs work with *damaging* powers. The cap of 25% well, freezing rain only gives -30%, so ya I think 25% is significant. My point, some AT/Builds dont have much in the way of damaging powers. Blasters are stuffed full of them. So what if one Incarnate ability does less for you then some of the others, the same is true for everyone.
Points about AT homogenization and buffing for, shall we say, intense end-game type trails are what rings true for me. I have an expectation that we are going to need all these abilities and I can see arguments that other power sets besides blasters are getting a *slightly* shorter stick in the mix.
I don't like the idea of judgement because it's boring.
I don't care if everyone gets a super nuke or whatever, but that's the problem, it's JUST a nuke. I liked the idea of enhancements building on my existing character, forcing new decisions about what powers I take and how to enhance them, something I was sort of (but not entirely) locked into. That was the alpha slot.
Everything I've read about judgement is just about 'you get boom'. No big decision there.
Dull.
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Well, the "you get a big boom" is a very big part, but there are still choices to be made. Do you want the boom to be PBAoE, Chain, TAoE, or a cone? How many targets do you want the boom to hit? What type of damage do you want the boom to do (though sadly this is tied in with attack vector)? Do you want special effects for anything that survives the boom? If so, do you want -dam, -end, -rech or (I forgot what fire has aside from a DoT, but whatever that is)? If you want to RP the power, that's yet another thing to factor into your choice.
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Originally Posted by Comfort
I don't like the idea of judgement because it's boring.
I don't care if everyone gets a super nuke or whatever, but that's the problem, it's JUST a nuke. I liked the idea of enhancements building on my existing character, forcing new decisions about what powers I take and how to enhance them, something I was sort of (but not entirely) locked into. That was the alpha slot. Everything I've read about judgement is just about 'you get boom'. No big decision there. Dull. |
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Originally Posted by BackAlleyBrawler
That...was a Herocon 09 exclusive easter egg. The powerset will not have doves associated with it.
Namely because you guys would want to color tint the damn doves, or make them hawks/ravens/flying sharks/etc and that's just a headache I do...not...want...to deal with. |
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There is always a roll for a *insert AT here* no matter the circumstances.
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Originally Posted by dave_p
If you haven't read up yet, check out this long, but excellent description of the first 5 Incarnate slots by dispari. Then look at Judgement. As an example, we have:
Pyronic: Base stats: 428.36 damage 80 foot range Targeted AoE 25 foot radius 16 targets max AoE, fire 1.00 activation time 20.00 endurance That's base damage. T4 w/T4 Musculature will do over 700 pts of damage. W/no crash. From range. W/a 24 target cap. It's also not scaled for ATs. Which means if defenders do the same damage, but can debuff the crap out of their foes first, they win. Scrappers & tanks w/far superior defenses doing the same AoE damage: win. Controllers are already win machines, and they just get more win (at least no containment, but does that mean no defiance for blasters?). Granted, it has an unenhanceable 90s recharge. On a team of 8, all w/Judgement, who notices? For long term AoE DPS, will blasters still be king? I *think* so, but the gap will be shrinking, mightily. Similar arguments may be made for other ATs as we get massive buffs, debuffs, pets, and likely crowd control in the future as well. I still think the AoE damage gap is closed the most w/the addition of the Judgement slot. And yes, this is 45+ content only, so 1-44, blasters will still rule the damage game, but as we have more and more end-game focused content, I can see less need (insofar as any AT is "needed") for a blaster going forward. Thoughts? Cries of Dooooooom? Or are we just happy to get more fireballs? |
Virtue: @Santorican
Dark/Shield Build Thread
I just want to point out that we are making assumptions on how quickly the enemy spawns will go down from these powers! We keep saying 8 ppl rotating them will all one shot the spawn and make everyone useless, but who is to say the spawns we will be fighting will actually take that much damage? I am thinking the content is going to be much more difficult, not only in level, but perhaps the enemies stats (more resistance, heals etc...) or maybe in new ways we haven't seen! Hopefully the nukes will just be a boost to teams killing speed in maps of spawns that would normally take forever without them?
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Considering there are many types of this nuke I am highly interested in enemy resistances, it would be quite different if the powers needed to defeat enemies came from a variety of sets (where they would be practically immune to some and vulnerable to others). That would be more in line with player armors. This would be oppose to the usual "armored against smashing lethal, sometime armored against everything else" which would give many more of a psychic type feeling (Which is pretty unique) "sometimes totally vulnerable, but plenty often practically worthless"
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Originally Posted by Brenodyja
I just want to point out that we are making assumptions on how quickly the enemy spawns will go down from these powers! We keep saying 8 ppl rotating them will all one shot the spawn and make everyone useless, but who is to say the spawns we will be fighting will actually take that much damage? I am thinking the content is going to be much more difficult, not only in level, but perhaps the enemies stats (more resistance, heals etc...) or maybe in new ways we haven't seen! Hopefully the nukes will just be a boost to teams killing speed in maps of spawns that would normally take forever without them?
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"Fascinating. I'm not bored at all, I swear." -Kikuchiyo
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I think more than that should have been done. If the nukes we have now if we are dealing with the end drain from it then nothing short of of +4 EB/AVs should live thru our nukes. Blasters as a whole do not do enough damage to justify their squishieness. I look at every other MMO that has a range class similar to ours and each one is 100 times more survivable out of the box compared to blasters and you dont have to worry about mobs every out ranging you.
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Originally Posted by StratoNexus
I think the true nukes ought to lose both the -end and the -recovery. I also think the recharge on them should be lowered. But I've thought that for a long time, a long time.
It could be interesting to lower the recharge to 300 seconds for defenders and corruptors but 240 seconds for blasters. |
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/Signed.
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Originally Posted by EvilRyu
If the nukes we have now if we are dealing with the end drain from it then nothing short of of +4 EB/AVs should live thru our nukes. Blasters as a whole do not do enough damage to justify their squishieness.
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I've left this thread mostly alone, due in part to forgetting it even existed, but to not devolve into a 'Why blasters' thread, i'm just going to point out that a blaster has a higher damage mod then a corr, and the only way for a corr to match the blaster is for scourge to kick in, which really only affects the last 10% of the mobs hitpoints. (scourge can proc anywhere from 50 - 0%, but due to its scaling nature, its most reliable at 10-0%)|
Originally Posted by dave_p
(*Blasters doing more damage than corrs is debatable and situational. I think we can agree that blasters have the best advantage doing front-loaded, burst damage, using Aim+BU chains to open fights (maybe after the tank has taken aggro... maybe not) w/o worrying about scourge. Hey, guess what Judgement blasts are really, really good at, and w/o relying on Aim+BU?)
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From 100 - 0% Blasters are doing 1.125 damage scale.
From 100 - 50% are doing .75 damage scale.
from 50 - 10% corruptors damage scale steadily increases from .75 to 1.5, and at 10% - 0% the corruptors damage scale maintains 1.5.
Now, this really only matters on AVs, as even EBs die to fast for corruptors to really feel an impact from scourge, and before anyone says 'well you have debuffs' keep in mind that on a team, that blaster, with the higher damage scale, has those debuffs to.
That's what i was meaning when i said there is a set up time on debuff/buff characters. Right out of the box blasters are doing the highest ranged damage, and the third highest melee damage *dominators and scrappers are higher, with dwarfs (both white and dark) being on par with blasters melee attacks* where as the debuff/buff sets have to either damage cap themselves (but somehow not damage cap the blaster) or put debuffs on targets the blaster hasn't already mowed down.
So while the argument that judgement steps on blasters toe as other ATs can deal that kind of damage from it, and on 8 man team, especially pure buff/debuff, those judgement powers can be rotated to make the blaster obsolete, in any given team those powers make any given damage AT obsolete, especially if that full team (be it 8, or 48) has t4 judgement boosts which extend past the aggro cap.
I don't feel like judgement is going to negatively impact my blasters playstyle, or prevent me from playing my blasters any less, and if my blaster isn't welcome on teams because other characters (non blasters) are more welcome once they have judgement powers unlocked, then that wasn't a team i wanted to be on anyways. I firmly believe in teaming with 'players' not 'characters' and i can zero problem running TFs with pure damage, or no tanks, etc. I don't see that changing one bit once i20 hits live.
Some early observations post I20. The overall DPS of teams, and especially leagues, have gone up like crazy, not unexpectedly. The circuit around the Lambda base now takes less than 2 min to complete. On Tuesday (when no one had any I20 slots), it was taking over 5, maybe closer to 10. Giant ambush spawns, multiple ambush/add spawns that usually meant team wipes are being melted away. And not everyone has their Judgment slots filled yet, certainly not w/the ultimate T4s.
I've only opened up Judgment (T3) on my Fire/Rad controller, and I'm noticing that I don't even have time to fire off EF before hitting my nuke, cuz things die too fast. Better off just leading w/the nuke. Interface is adding a lot to damage too, since I'm going w/the dam proc tree. I've run my Fire/Ice blaster through both trials a bit, and I still feel him contributing to damage w/o Judgment, but hard to gauge how much. He's the only guy I've stolen aggro from the tanks on the AV fights though, getting sequestered a few times. I think that was just bad tanking though. Steady flow of damage is very nice for the prison break part of BAF.
Not sure yet what everything will mean for blasters going forward. What I'm seeing more than anything, that many of us predicted on this thread, is the blurring of lines bet. ATs. No one really cares what you're bringing to each trial any more. Everyone does damage. Everyone buffs/debuffs. Tanks, and brutes to lesser extent, seem to be still kinda favored as bags of HP & taunters. It'll be more interesting to see how the various I20 incarnated ATs function outside of the new trials & leagues though.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
[snipped for brevity]
As a sidenote vis-a-vis the buff/debuff team issue, I've always thought it was interesting that the best singular damage buff in the game (Fulcrum Shift) has a huge melee bias.